There’s something about the Big Apple - that old town New York - that breeds uber-talented knitters and artists of all types. Could there be something in the water? Certainly there seems to be inspiration in the air. Our latest Manhattan discovery is opera singer and knitting designer, Lisa Daehlin, who has so many strings to her bow we’re surprised she can fit the bow in her small New York apartment!

Lisa’s a dynamo. If you can’t feel revved up and inspired after a conversation with her you should probably check your pulse. She started knitting when she moved from Minnesota to New York to pursue her singing career. In Minnesota she was a sewer. “You need room to sew,” she explains. “In New York you don’t have room. I had room to knit.”

When 9/11 struck, Lisa’s corporate job “disappeared” and she started investigating sample knitting for designers. Through a knitting group she discovered that an Editor with Interweave, Teva Durham, was looking for knitters so Lisa made contact. “I got to work with gorgeous cashmere,” she enthuses. Along the way Teva saw the things Lisa was making and wearing and encouraged her to send the pieces into Interweave. When Lisa hesitated Teva combined them with items she was sending herself and submitted them on the singer’s behalf. Today her designs are featured in the ‘Bags of Style’ and ‘Lace Style’ edited by Ann Budd and Pam Allen.

“I hadn’t planned on being a knitter,” says Lisa who is now the first knitting teacher at New York’s prestigious Cooper Union institution, known for its outstanding academic programs in architecture, art and engineering. She also maintains a full time position as a secretary.

She marvels at how smoothly her knitting career has evolved, perhaps because the pursuit of an operatic career can be so slow-moving. “I was built to sing,” she says. “In my late 20s a teacher told me I had to go to New York if I was going to have a chance. The world of opera is specialised and unique. I work with small companies around Manhattan. I’m a singer... that’s what I believe but I stumbled into knitting and I’ve found some success there.”

There are synergies between singing and knitting in the designer’s mind. “They’re both a process,” she says. “With each of them you have to love the process... stitch by stitch with the knitting or via the laborious research or the voice training you have to do with opera. Even with my teaching, which I’m doing a lot of, I think that still comes back to performing... getting something across whether it be information about knitting or about Puccini!”

Lisa’s knit designs are truly audacious - big, bold, beautiful and unique. “I love the idea of taking something small and blowing it up really big,” she says. “I like big, sculptural pieces and I am really an accessories person. I love bags... bags, bags, bags, bags, bags!” In ‘Bag Style’ her gorgeous green creation (pictured above), which Lisa likes to call The Paisley Purse, was inspired by 1960s hat boxes. “The version in the book is quite advanced,” she concedes, adding that if you do it without all the lace work it becomes a lot simpler.

“It’s nice to see your work in print and there’s a certain cache about it,” she says, “but at the end of the day not many knit designers make a living completely from their work. If you really love it you have to really work at it. Sometimes, when I explain to people what’s involved in this industry, they ask me if I’m kidding.”

On the singing front, Lisa says she often drawn to songs about handwork and finds both singing and knitting are very intimate processes - close to your body or of your body. She’s been approached by a woman who wants to write a song for her about the work women do with their hands. “I’d like to perform it in front of a room full of knitters,” she says.

Another friend - Dora Ohrenstein, founder of www.crochetinsider.com [crochetinsider.com] -is also a gifted (semi-retired) singer and the pair are considering a collaborative project mixing their joint loves of song and yarn. “Maybeit will involve a CD, performance, music and patterns,” Lisa muses.

Based
New York (USA)

Websites
www.delisa.us [delisa.us] (designer)
www.lisadaehlin.com [lisadaehlin.com] (singer)

Postal address
PO Box 230957, Ansonia Station
New York City, NY  10023

Email
lisadaehlin@yahoo.com

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